Ok, so I've been riding for a while and am making some good progress, but I constantly forget to warmup, meaning I'll go out and kill myself for half and hour, come home and collapse, feeling nauseous. This usually happens after hill training, (8 repeats of 1km at 7%), and I never get it from flat road riding, it's a pain because I should be feeling good about the way I'm riding, but all I'm feeling is lactic, lactic, lactic.

Er, warm up maybe? It can take me 20 minutes before I've shaken the stiffness out and am no longer feeling the legs complaining. I just do it by treating the first part of the ride as the warm-up, with mostly moderate pace but some hard efforts. Same before races - I like to get at least 15 minutes warm-up.

You could also get some yoga or stretching routines, or some rollers. For me, I'd rather be on the road.

I usually do about 15 or 20 minutes warmup before starting my session proper, and like to do closer to 30 minutes before a race. Generally I start off really easy, small chainring 100rpm to get the legs to wake up, heart rate for this would be recovery so very easy. After a few minutes of that (whenever my legs feel ok) I'll start pushing a bigger gear and get my HR into E1, still spinning around 95-100rpm, do this for about 5 minutes. Then introduce a few efforts, moderate to start with, maybe 30 seconds at E2 sort of intensity, building up to some short E3 sprint type efforts, back to E1 in between efforts (make sure it's E1 not recovery). Just play around and see what works for you, by the end of the warm up you should feel warm (a light sweat) but not tired.

It will also make you feel better afterwards if you do a decent cool down ride, basically spin the legs for 15 minutes after you finish your session (E1 down to RE heart rate, small chainring for most of it probably)

It always takes me at least 20 mins or so to warm up. Cycling's essentially a low impact/low intensity exercise in the first instance. I wouldn't attempt 7% hill repeats straight out the front door. I try to avoid any hills until I'm good and warmed up in any case.

Throw away the gadgets and stats and just go ride for 30 mins or so before you do anything serious in the way of intensity/repeats or climbing. If you don't have an hour to spare you're probably doing more harm than good, physically and mentally.... in my opinion..... doing such intense stuff from the get-go.

Have you tried measuring that by taking your pulse? I've had readings like that at the start of a ride that were just from conduction problems with the monitor. Once there's a bit of light sweat it settled.

I'm not really sure it's a technical issue as far as spiking goes, mostly because the graph is pretty smooth and follows the amount of effort I put in.

Just after I get on the bike there is a downhill section, and being keen to move I pedal to go fast (because it's fun!). If I remember to take it easy at the start there isn't the big spike at the beginning.

I use the same strap with a forerunner 310XT for running and get the same average readings, but I always walk for around a km before starting to run so I'm properly warmed up.

I haven't actually confirmed the reading by counting when exercising, but sitting here just now it's reading ~70 which my counting agrees with.

I get the same thing with my garmin now its getting colder, basically in summer i sweat enough that i get good contact straight away, in winter i have to wet the pads.Was a bit Say What though when it first happened, but seeing as i wasn't breathing hard it was pretty obviously the garmin and not me.

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